Hello! This morning on my way in to work, a message popped up on my display that said "Restoring engine oil conditions, please wait until engine has shut off." I tried googling this message and came up with nothing. Anyone able to tell me what secret Prime thing is going on?
I am guessing you rarely use the ICE in daily driving. Water will make its way into the oil over time. More will actually get in if the ICE only runs for short periods of time, like coming on when you got just a mile left in the trip. Water in the oil is bad beyond the obvious reasons because it reacts with degraded oil bits and contaminants to form acids. It would seem the Prime will fire up the ICE to boil off any water that might have gotten in the oil. The Volt refers to this as an engine maintenance mode since it also gets oil coating everything again, and that is what the PHEV community generally uses as a generic term.
Hey, thanks! That makes sense, and yes, I rarely need the ICE to run. It runs usually only because it is cold, and that's only for a couple miles, or on the rare occasion that I run out of charge before I get home (not very often!).
The warm up cycle a hybrid goes through is to get the emissions within spec, and isn't long enough to fully warm up the entire engine in the winter. Then the cold makes in easier for water to get into the oil. Most of that water is a by product of combustion, and some seeps past the piston rings to the crank case. In a cold engine, it will condense out of the air before getting vented through the PCV.
If you're asking me, I have only had the car since September 16, and I have only about 1600 miles on it, so, not very many
If the last full warmup was when it was new then it was 3 months for the maintenance cycle to run. or just a coincidence.
